Lauren Knight Hughes: Managing Business Operations of a Sports-Tech Company (Full Transcript)

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Ronen Ainbinder 0:32

On today's Halftime Snacks, we're hosting a MASSIVE guest. She's the Director of Business Operations at Sports Thread. Not only was she the first hired employee there, but for over five years, she has executed multiple roles in diverse areas such as social media, revenue operations, media relations, partnerships development, and more.

Sports Thread is THE social media app for athletes. It has over a million people in its network, and it now ranks as a top 50 sports app in the App Store.

Our guest has been an essential piece of the lego to build and develop the network and software that brings several solutions to the sports industry.

Such a pleasure to share the mic with her.

Ladies and gents, Lauren Knight Hughes!

Lauren Knight Hughes 1:20

Hey Ronen! Thank you for having me.

Ronen Ainbinder 1:22

No, Lauren, thank you for accepting my invitation. We're going to have something very special today because never before have we hosted a guest who can speak Spanish. This is my native language, so the icebreaker for you will be in Spanish. Of course, it will translate right after so that everyone knows what the hell happened, but so this is the question, okay. Cual es tu bebida favorita para tomar en un partido de football?

Lauren Knight Hughes 1:52

Oh, no me gusta tomar, pero para mi, solo water! O Coca Cola – si?

Ronen Ainbinder 2:06

Okay, so I asked, What is your favorite beverage to drink at a sports game, and Lauren said she doesn't drink. But if she drinks, she's gonna drink some water or Coca-Cola. That's awesome, Lauren! We hosted Sean, who's the CEO of Sports Thread, a while ago. And if you guys want to learn more about Sports Thread, I suggest you check out that episode. But today, we're going to be speaking with one of the essential elements for its development: lowering and lowering. Let's first of all start with talking about what it means to work at a startup. So my question is, what was the first moment you realized that working in a startup was nothing like you had before, nothing like you experienced before, or nothing like you even expected before?

Lauren Knight Hughes 3:00

I remember being in college and thinking about what career I wanted. I studied international relations. It was a while ago. But in school, it's very much you go to class, take the test, and pass the test. And then you go to next semester, and it's kind of in that order. When I went to a startup, all of a sudden, it was kind of like my true self came to life because there was no blueprint. There wasn't somebody telling you how to do it; you just are told what your superiors do unless you own the business. But you're told what to do. And what's interesting about being in a startup is your sort of building a business without any liability attached to having it be your own. When I was hired, I figured it out, learned to do it. Here's the basic foundation; go figure it out. And I remember being an intern and just being excited because I could, it was sort of like a playground to just build and learn how to do it for myself.

Ronen Ainbinder 4:13

Yeah, I also remember the first time that I worked at the startup back when I was living in Israel, that you have to, like, build your path. And that's like, kind of scary, because at least in my experience, it was scary. You just have to try and fail super quickly because you don't know what bridge to put in the path or what is the right direction to take. So I guess that my lesson then was to find out or figure out how to iterate super quickly to just know if something I did was a mistake or not very fast so that I cannot carry on any longer. But I guess I mean, it's super interesting that you've been one of the first or even the first employees to work with them. So you've seen it grow. I mean, it has been a long way, but also a big way. It's a big company now. And sports has, as I mentioned in the intro, is managing over a million people in their network. So you've seen it grow. And so I want to know if you can share with us maybe a couple of challenges that you've seen, or things that you faced, as a team, right to, to grow the team? Or how have you learned to overcome those challenges? Can you share a couple of stories with us or things that you can see as important while growing a team?

Lauren Knight Hughes 5:44

Yeah, another good question. When I started there, it was just myself, the CEO, and the sales director. So it's just three. And then we hired on probably a year later another person. And then if a few more slowly after that, what I think is something that I've seen be essential in a team is the person kind of leading the force, whether that is the CEO, in which case, this would be Shawn, or the lead the head of the department, which over time became me in certain departments. And those types of people have to be able to have kind of the vision, that's not real yet. And they have to see that you're doing things today. And you're placing processes and systems in place today that will be used by maybe ten people right in the next few months instead of just one. So it's been great. And I think it's extremely important to have that one person who has that vision of what this department will grow to in a year. And then second to that, and as important are the people that will do it. Because sometimes you'll see people that are good at, they have an amazing idea. And ideas are great, and everybody can have great ideas. And, and they're good ideas, and they have a plan for how it gets done. But then those executing the plans aren't always the ideal people. But they're the ones doing the system. So I think that has been important just like from the beginning having that vision because unless you have the vision, it's so hard on the day to day that it would be easy to stop. The other interesting thing, I think, is to look at everybody being on the same page, as far as what your company is doing over the next three to six months, if not a year, but maybe the next three to six months. Because unless you are airtight on that kind of stuff, it's easy to just get pulled in so many directions. So when we began, we didn't have departments. We were so small that there weren't departments. So we've just built them over time. And that came from deciding as a unit. Okay, now we're going to, we're going to build partnerships, and you have one person do it, and then they teach a second person. And then those two people do very, very well. And they teach two more people in those four people, And then all of a sudden, you have a partnership department. But everybody's on the same page with that's what we're doing right now. And something that my boss often says is that it's easier to modify than it is to create. But she's right. If you can get one process down and one system down, you can take that to another department with everybody having the same goal and just scale much more quickly. Because everybody knows what they're doing in those three, six months, and their focus and they're getting it done. That's something that I thought was key. Because like you said, in startups, you don't have a blueprint. Often you're so autonomous that you could probably get away with thinking you're doing a lot in the day. Still, you're not producing, so you have to be focused. Does that make sense?

Ronen Ainbinder 9:26

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so many comments here. I'm gonna try and just put out the best ones that come to mind. I think that editing is easier than starting something or creating something I think it relates to. It is better than perfect. And I guess that when you have a founder who is not a perfectionist or someone very specific on how things need to be done. And he can have this flexibility, and I also mean this for you. I don't mean it only for Sean. Still, when you're developing new things, Yeah, as a content creator, I can tell you that being a perfectionist is just your only enemy. Because otherwise, you'll never finish. You can spend years or months, or even weeks on a specific project and never launch it. So I guess that's a key area. And the second comment that I want to make, Lauren, and I also want to hear your opinion is that it's so much easier to translate a corporate culture and the identity of a company when you're small. Still, it's not as easy or not as simple to do it while you're growing the company. Out of a sudden, okay, you get two or three new employees, But what if, what if all of a sudden, you get 1010? new employees? So how are you? How do you keep up with culture? How do you keep up with values? How do you keep up with a vision? And I think that it's kind of related to having that person that lives in the future and can bring that future to the present and talk about it in every conversation. But I want to know if there's any other element you think is important to keep that culture aligned as you guys grow in it? I mean, I mean, growing fast, When you're growing slowly? Or is it one by one? Maybe it's easier, but when it's fast, and I guess it's different.

Lauren Knight Hughes 11:18

It's a good question. At one point, we had a lot of people join the company at once. And the majority of them were remote, quite a few of them more in the Terminal to our headquarters. But you're right. There's a cultural factor to this. Culture is so important. If you don't maintain a culture within the company that's the same all around, then you're this, this, this dinner thing; they say you're only as good as your greatest or weakest link. I believe that, like, maintaining a culture. I had to learn, and I'm learning how to do that myself. One of the documentaries that helped me see how people can do that is the last dance. Have you seen that with Michael Jordan?

Ronen Ainbinder 12:15

Yeah, of course.

Lauren Knight Hughes 12:16

Yeah, it's amazing. I've seen it like seven times. It's so good. Because Michael Jordan, you don't know that much about him. Like I didn't, I didn't grow bowls on top like that. But watching the documentary, he's just so good as an athlete that he's allowed to tell everybody to get it together when they're not. And then they respect him for that. When he does say that, and that's his ability to tell that to the team, or like if practice sucks, or something, it is a version of keeping the culture airtight. And I think that, like that, comes from the top down. I believe, personally, that if the people at the top of the company don't have a culture of grind and work hard and show up and do the stuff that they don't, it sucks, but you do it anyway. If they do that, then the tier below them will do it. And then the terrible Oh, we'll do it. And then the ones that don't do it stand out like a sore thumb. And they're not meant to be in that company. And that's okay. But it's better to weed those people out for the company, but also be for those people. Like if they don't want to be there, they're unhappy there. So it's just not a good fit. So I think basically, back to the Michael Jordan thing. If you want to have a company of just like, strong united people, it's a strong culture. I think the people leading the departments, the forces, or the company need to be extremely good and strong to lead because no one will take them seriously. And if they are, that people will follow the right people will follow.

Ronen Ainbinder 14:01

That's an awesome way of putting it, Lauren. You've been the head or Director of Business Operations. Operations are like a headache for people who are not used to it because of all the things that happen in between and all the things that you have to solve in the way. So I want to get your insight or your, you're like a mental blueprint on how exactly do you think about finding issues that are repetitive finding issues that are from the same category? Let's say, what is the mental model that you use to find those fires in the daily operations of Sports Thread?

Lauren Knight Hughes 14:43

I have learned that no one can put a fire out effectively at scale, it seems, unless they've dealt with the problem themselves. A lot of the time, for example, I didn't understand all The logistical headaches and the emotional headaches and the just time, the lack of time that comes with managing people. Like, when I was being managed as just I didn't have anybody beneath me, I didn't understand it. And then I manage people, and all of a sudden, you understand it? And you're like, oh, okay, crap. Okay, this, I kind of get where they're coming from, with this thing. I could do it differently. This is not right. So that applies to everything. In operations, I think that if you're going to lead a department or lead a company, you probably should have been able to say that you've done those things yourself. Because then you understand the language of what's going on. And I don't think that that means all the little nuances that come with it.

People don't want to admit business as emotional, but business is super emotional. Like it is. Because people do business with people they like and managing people is emotional because people are emotional beings. So if you step back and understand how to scale a business typically takes people, you have to be managed, first be coachable. And then manage people, if that's what you're doing. And then the people you're managing, I think you should probably have done what you're asking them to do. So that you can then assess what's going on, like you said, take a step back and say three of 10 people are struggling with this problem, right, like, assess that daily, if not weekly, kind of take a note of each person, and then as a whole. Then my experience is that I do very, I have a lot of success when you apply, like answers to tools, meaning you want to use tools all the time, like videos, recording videos, to answer questions, because when you answer questions at scale, So you're putting out 20 fires with one video, if the video is answering the questions that majority of people have, but you have to do the work to figure out what the right questions are, you have to have been there and understand what they're dealing with to be able to answer the question. Does that make sense?

Ronen Ainbinder 17:25

Absolutely. I think that and I've seen this also from my consulting in a couple of companies that things that can be repeated with no variation in what the content is, there's a lot of opportunity on creating content that is May that to solve all their like small little questions, or to educate this, for instance, is something that I, I used to recommend some clients is that they create a guide on how to like onboard the company so that you just give it to someone new. Tell them this is what you need to know. These are all the things that are going on, things that you can put into text. Not everything you can teach is not everything that happens in a company you can teach. But you can teach systems, teaching platforms, teach things like politics, and teach how communication works. Who is your boss, who can you answer to? And who can you like, who should you go for, for questions. So I guess that creating content to massively service all these like small little fires or small, little things that require time. It's just, it's just, it's just time that you say for yourself at the end of the day.

Lauren Knight Hughes 18:37

Well, and I do exactly that. And also, something that I've had to learn to do is I'm not, I'm not, Sean in this company, I'm the CEO. But to Shawn's credit, he's given me a lot of autonomy in the company to play because he doesn't have the time to be there to do all of it. But also, he's trusted me with certain scenarios that I've proven I can be trusted in. And I think that goes for every person, You, it. It's not cool to micromanage everybody; you have to give them the tools to start in the foundation. But I think people start to hate their jobs or don't understand how to put out fires for themselves when they're expecting to be told what to do all the time, rather than like to be trusted to figure it out for themselves. So I think, like you said, building the systems in the kind of like an obvious 1-6 steps is what we do. If there's a glitch in any of those, let's dress it, and then let's create a video about it or something like that to apply it to scale. But all right next time. Like why don't you tell me what you would do? And like, I'd like to hear it and have them have your people. I mean, it's a team. It's not like you're some kind of somebody's on top; you're just merely guiding the team forward. And I think that's an important thing for systems and putting out fires because then everybody puts out their fires because they can't.

Ronen Ainbinder 20:10

Yeah, massive shout out, by the way, to Sean Leary, a former guest of the Halftime Snacks. And Lauren is talking wonders about you. Such a massive shout-out! Lauren, let's talk about sources of leverage. You mentioned one of them, which is content that you use either by video or by it can even be an email for which you have the template. Then you just use it once again; once a specific fire happens, you have these emails that you just send out, which will solve it and put the fire out forever until it comes again. But what are other sources of leverage that you have in mind or that you use? When specific fires in operations? And if you want to talk about specific operations, meaning internal or with clients, or with customers, or within the network, things that happen? And you already know, what is it? What is the tool? Better? Maybe that's the better way of putting it? What are the tools that you use to put out fires when they come out?

Lauren Knight Hughes 21:18

Yeah, depends on from my experience that the problem I suppose that you're dealing with, because putting out a fire in, let's say, let's say sales, for example, you make enough sales in a certain industry, you start to know what the questions are going to be, you start to know what to say in advance to get around questions. And how to combat them, right. So let's say there's a fire where if you have 10 people on a sales team that are all moving forward. They're trying to generate revenue, but three of these people again are having the same issue. My opinion is to put out the fire, have the team get together as a whole, and have the people that are not necessarily the leader, or whatever, Everybody's leader, not not the head of a department, let's say, the people that are in that actual space and doing it well explain to the three that maybe are struggling a little bit, what they could do differently. And then it's just as simple as an FAQ, right, putting things down on paper so that people can refer to that Cordova video. Now, let's say like with, with like hires, I would say back to your question about culture. I think that many fires can be avoided if the culture is relatively synonymous across the board. And I think that that just comes with hiring appropriately. And then also making sure everybody's getting what they want out of it as an employee. But there's sort of a system that I've come across; it's like a quadrant system for quadrants. A, B, C, and D is sort of how you would like to categorize people, let's say. It's not them, their character, their position in your company, their role, and how they're navigating it. And you're going to categorize them to be able to just see their performance, not emotionally; it's just how it is on paper. The first category is the best; it's like A, an employee or manager, whatever. They are living by the rules of the system. And they're producing, right, so they're doing the things that the system needs for them in their way, but they're also producing, so they're killing it. There Is somebody who is producing, but they're not living by the rules. So that's a problem when you're trying to understand data because maybe they're producing money, let's say. Still, they don't log how they got there, or they don't necessarily input the data points as to whether this lead came from this source or took this many meetings, right, or this was the pitch given, and so forth. So that's a B person producing with no rules challenging to manage because they're not giving you what you need to see the big picture. A C person is, basically they are living the rules, but they don't produce. So there, they're doing the system, and they're like that book smart person who's like getting A through Z done. But then, when it comes to getting the results done, it's just not happening. And so you have to step back and see why, like, what's going on there, and then the D. person would have no results and they're not living by the rules, So those categories, I think, help to like if somebody is maybe not or something in a system, maybe not performing the way It would need to be to get where the goal is that helps to categorize what's going on, I think a little bit more simply. And then, you can put people and or processes into these categories as list forms. And then cut down where you need to focus and improve, or get rid of essentially what could be in processes and limiting those kinds of things. So I suppose that's an answer that I think has been that I've used it for different things in the company. I've used it for just different elements, even Media Relations, sales partnerships all around. But it's helped me to simplify and organize.

Ronen Ainbinder 25:47

The thing that I liked the most about what you're telling us, Lauren, which I think is super valuable, is that instead of thinking, how can I put fires off? Let's say, let's think, how can I prevent fires from starting? Yeah, and I love how you mentioned, like hiring. This is it just brings me back to a mental model by Charlie Munger, a popular investor, that he said, it's called inversion. And it means don't think about how you can make money, just think about how you can avoid losing money. So it's, you can do more by avoiding losing than you can do by trying to win. So I guess that this translates to, kind of like this template that you use, or this model that you have, that helps you make probably better decisions when it comes to dealing with fires or even preventing fires from starting. Before, before they start.

Lauren Knight Hughes 26:48

Yeah, and I mean, I believe that people are capable of stuff as long as they're given, as long as they feel acknowledged. And everybody's gonna say, like, it's not about feeling. Still, it's 100% like, if you don't feel like you are acknowledged in the business, that you're spending eight 910 hours a day doing, you're not gonna want to be there. And you're not going to do the little things that are required of you to bring yourself or but also your team forward. And that's going to make it hard for the people managing you. Because then the system is broken. So I believe that if you give people the autonomy, given, given the tools, make the system as clear as you can allow them to have ownership over the system, because it is their system, they are doing it and have them understand why they're doing it, that I think you're gonna prevent fires, because then those people are tuned into like, Oh, this is a fire, like, how do we solve this instead of like, I don't know what went wrong, I guess we'll just have them figure it out. So that's a good way, like you said, of preventing the fires from happening, because other people are bought into it. Alright, the goal is to get here; we have a few roadblocks. But how do we all as a team get past those?

Ronen Ainbinder 28:05

So many takeaways, Lauren, this, this has been amazing. I also want to get your insight, kind of like on the marketing side, because that's also part of what you've been doing for sports through your time there. So how can you maybe rank the relevance of the different marketing and growth strategies that you've gone through and that you've used for it, specifically for sports threat read, because this might vary between different sports technology, startups, and platforms? But what has worked for you guys in comparing Media Relations, licensing, social media, traditional advertisement, advertising, and other forms of marketing that you can think about? Maybe just rank them? And how, how efficient have they been from the best one to maybe the less efficient one? What would be the rank? In your mind?

Lauren Knight Hughes 29:00

Yeah, another good question, because they all are marketing tools. And I think that thing Some say before I rank it is that they're all achieving something slightly different, even though they are generally marketing. So as far as to let's say Media Relations. Media is interesting, because when I spoke with the LA Times or USA Today, like ESPN or smaller ones, like the Arizona Republic, or it was Arizona Central, and a few others if you're, you're showcasing your brand and your product in a way that is unique and interesting to an audience. Not even necessarily an audience that wants to use it. But it's an app. It's an interesting story that you're giving the reporter or the journalists about what's happening in the grand scheme of the industry that you're involved with, and then how your business or your role has a piece of that. And so I think that's incredibly essential, because you even though people might not read the newspapers like they used to it, which that could be a bad thing, it whatever it is, like, there still is value to having your company's name attached to these large entities, and that even if you don't read the article, there's a lot of value to that. Definitely, so I think, in terms of grand like scope, reaching the most people, media relations, for sure, because whether they use the product or not, it's qualifying your brand and your company to many people. And it's just like advertising touchpoints matters to just consumers in any way, the more times they see half time snacks, the more times they're gonna want to listen, it's gonna happen over time, So everybody's doing it, I think that's the best, the biggest way to get the most people at one time is Media Relations. So that's great. I think that advertisements are only as valuable as the messages to the person seeing them. So I know one of the reasons our ads are as strong as they are, is that we can segment out the person receiving them pretty, pretty darn well. So if you're going to send it to an athlete, that message is for an athlete versus a coach; that message is for a coach. So I think advertising is such a bummer because it's so expensive. And we all hate doing it, but you have to do it. Because again, it's touchpoints it's no different than Media Relations, you have to do it. But I don't think that the usage of the product or adoption of the brand happens unless the ad is specifically for that person receiving it. Beyond that, I also believe that an advertisement should have value in the ad. Someone who does very well with this is Tom bill. I believe it is that Impact Theory. He is an amazing entrepreneur, but he gives you like five minutes of content that helps you in his ads. So then you want to be a part of what he's talking about and pay the 10 grand because he just gave you stuff. So the advertising part is very helpful in the sense that it's more touchpoints. It's also very broad, like Media Relations. But suppose you want it to get people to convert. Which is usually the goal, make it extremely valuable to the person you're reaching and bring value in that too, in my opinion. The licensing, that's something that I think is just dependent on the company, how they do it, we don't license out the sportswear brand, to other companies to us or anything. So I can't speak about that. But I've seen it do very well for companies, like fanatics and stuff. That's crazy, huge. So that works very well for them. But that's just not our field. And then

Ronen Ainbinder 33:12

It's probably a very broad question because marketing itself and growth itself mean many things. You get brand awareness, brand development, sales, and even their growth as a platform and growth as users and growth like money and monetization. So it's kind of like there's a lot of like, points where these might cover? And this is a very broad question, right. But if you could choose one of the ones that have impacted the most would it be Media Relations, would you say?

Lauren Knight Hughes 33:53

Probably Media Relations, in my opinion, I'm also biased because I've done it. But I think that it accomplishes a lot in a very short amount of time. Whether that's fundraising or selling advertising. In our case, getting new users on the app does help to have the LA Times touting Sports Thread; that's a good thing. And so yeah, my opinion would be that. I think I'll say this, the Gary Vee approach of how he went back in the day and did the white the story about his dad having the winery. He went in and tweeted at people about wine.

I mean, that is as organic as it gets. And I think that's a form of advertising 100%. I think that's probably the most effective of everything because it doesn't matter how broad you are, how many followers you have. So much of it comes down to engagement. And if you're willing to do a one-on-one organic reach with people, which is exactly what he did. This is exactly why he's as big as he is because he spent hours doing that. That's the most effective. So I would say, definitely the one to one, getting your someone very close to me told me that they were told by other very successful billionaires basically, that if you get 1000 people to buy into your brand and your product 1000, then you will scale because those 1000 people bring in the scaling for you. After all, they're so bought in. So find those people through these organic reaches and advertising or just being engaged with them. And that will accomplish that now, if you want the big picture revenue fundraising, media relations, so it's just different things you're accomplishing.

Ronen Ainbinder 35:46

Yeah, I love it. I love it. 1000 through friends is I think I understand horror, which I'm not so sure about. But yeah, I love that, Lauren; this has gone so fast. We've learned so much from you, from your role. And from your experience, it has been amazing. I can't live without asking you a more personal question. And that is, suppose you have enough money to make a sizable charitable donation? How would you spend this money in a philanthropic way? What would you choose?

Lauren Knight Hughes 36:17

That's a good question. Yeah, I think that one day, I would like to make my own charity. I'm passionate about helping people that have been sex trafficked, particularly women and kids. I think I mean, it's one of its one of the largest businesses in the world, unfortunately. And it's just so common through social mediums. I mean, I work at a social networking platform. And we're amazing about protecting our network. There's a lot of companies out there that it's just so big, they can't. So I think that it would be amazing to be a part of creating a company that would like you're talking about preventing the situation from happening, rather than putting out the fires. And I think that there can be many things that can be done by educating women in other countries and the States. There's a, there's proof. There's data on if you educate women and make them more autonomous and their lifestyle. They have their businesses, their income, and their network and community. That means that they can better care for themselves, not be reliant, and make better choices. And that helps to diminish the sex trafficking of women and then also their children. So I would love to be involved in that space. I will be at some point, but it's a little down the road. But that's probably what I would do.

Ronen Ainbinder 37:46

That's amazing. Lauren, thanks so much for sharing. I'm sure that you'll eventually get there soon. And I want to thank you so much for, again, for taking my invitation and joining me. Keep it up. Keep telling us how you put out fires in business and life. And hopefully, we'll get to have another conversation like this on the Halftime Snacks sometime soon. But in the meantime, Lauren, I just want to say thank you so much for coming!